Part 1 of a 2 part article
After my interview with Anita, the question ‘how was he able to recover so quickly?’ It kept going through my head. My rational mind needed an explanation. This article explores possible explanations for her incredibly fast recovery, including how Anita explains the miracle of her healing. He also outlines some unique insights into how and why deep healing takes place. I introduced the notion of the role, or higher purpose, that disease can play in helping us discover what we need to do to speed up the healing process and make cancer strange.
Anita Moorjani’s story is amazing and includes how she contributed to and was later cured of her stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. During my interview with her, she told me that she was taken to the hospital after falling into a coma when her organs began to shut down due to the cancer ravaging her body, including lemon-sized tumors in her center and lesions all over her skin caused by toxins her body was releasing. It was during the coma that she had a near death experience (NDE) after which she returned and was cured in a matter of days, amazing all her doctors and family! Think about it, less than a week after her NDE, tests showed she didn’t have cancer. The doctors couldn’t even find lymph nodes big enough to biopsy! To better understand the context of her recovery, I’ll start with what led up to her cancer diagnosis.
living in fear
Anita openly admits that she was driven by fear in many aspects of her life, “I was afraid that I wasn’t good enough and that I wouldn’t fit in.” As for her health, she talks about her obsession with eating the right foods and doing the right things to avoid cancer and other diseases. Anita now realizes that she did not focus enough on finding pleasure in what she did to take care of herself. Her attention turned to avoiding what she feared rather than finding healthy and enjoyable ways to support her well-being. As we all know, fear can be a paralyzing emotion. It can monopolize our thoughts and make us feel vulnerable or even powerless. It can also wreak havoc in other aspects of our lives; disturbing our sleep, our mood and resulting in high levels of stress. In the long term, this negative stress can weaken the immune response and affect our ability to stay healthy.
Please everyone but herself
Anita was also a professed people pleaser. After coming out of the coma and NDE, she realized that her life had been focused on doing things for others to feel accepted and not bother anyone. There had been little concern for what would please her. She laments, “I thought it was selfish to love myself.” During the NDE she said that she felt a heightened awareness of her own feelings and emotions. This was an unusual feeling for her and helped her realize that throughout her life she had been disconnected from her emotions. Growing up, her individual needs were not valued. Like many of us, she was not taught to listen, respect and love herself.
Take responsibility for your cancer
According to Louise Hay (cancer progressive, metaphysical lecturer and teacher, author, and editor), the underlying cause of all disease is a lack of self-love. In her book You Can Heal Your Life (Hay House Inc. 1984), which has sold more than 35 million copies, Louise relates lymphatic problems to the need to refocus the mind on the essentials of life: love and joy. This notion supports Anita’s premise that by focusing her energy on pleasing and serving the needs of others, she neglected the key ingredient of self-love. Her lack of self-esteem, combined with her overwhelming fears, led her to the conclusion that she actually caused the cancer. Those who believe in the law of attraction would probably agree. This law claims that what we focus on expands and becomes more present in our lives. So even if Anita was worried about avoiding cancer, her fear and other negative thoughts of hers unconsciously fueled and energized the idea of getting cancer. Using the law of attraction to our advantage in a situation like this would mean consciously focusing our attention and energy on joy, love, health, and well-being rather than slipping into an avoidance or fear-based mindset.
This does not mean that she, or anyone else with cancer, has to feel guilty or blame themselves. It’s not about blame, it’s about acceptance and ownership, which play an important and somewhat surprising role in the healing process; actually, they are empowering. If we can see that we play a contributing role in bringing cancer into our lives, it follows that by changing the way we think and act, we can contribute to our own healing.
His near-death revelation
It was on the night of February 2. 2 of 2006 that Anita fell into a coma and her family was told that she only had a few hours to live. During her NDE she was faced with the choice of returning or accepting her impending death. Her dilemma was essentially whether to continue on a journey towards pure light and love (in the afterlife we apparently experience feelings of complete love that are overwhelmingly wonderful, like nothing we have ever felt before) or return to the sick and dying body of she. The easy choice for her would have been to stay in that place of pure bliss, except that during her NDE she learned that her true essence is pure love. She now says, “deep down, we are all pure love.” What a great belief for all of us to embrace! However, we can read these words and intellectually agree (or not), but the good thing is that she really experienced that state of pure love. At that point, she made a major shift in consciousness, likely similar to what one would experience when enlightened. From this new place of awareness, she affirms that “only when I love myself can I love others”. His new perspective on her confirms that self-love is anything but selfish! Before deciding whether or not to return, he received the following insight from his late father, “Now that you know the truth of who you are, your body will reflect this truth and you will be healed. Come back and live your life without fear.” So she made the brave decision to return to her body and take her life back.
The NDE gave her new confidence because she was blessed with the realization of her own magnificence. She understood for the first time that she didn’t have to try to be someone other than herself. She now realizes that being herself is her unique and wonderful gift to the world. In retrospect, she sees this concept as so simple, but truly embracing such a profound truth is something most of us find difficult. This truth gave her the courage to share her ideas and experiences with the world, which is a big part of her life’s purpose. She describes an important element in being able to fully embrace her purpose as “being myself, being true to who I am.”
In part 2 of this article, I will discuss Anita’s explanation of her rapid healing and try to explain how this miracle could have happened.
